Recognition for Stuart, playground dedicated
Borough Finance Director Jila Stuart has been named Alaska’s Municipal Employee of the Year by the Alaska Municipal League.
In a memo, mayor Tom Morphet praised Stuart’s depth of expertise and commitment to transparency, writing that Stuart “is a public servant in every sense.”
The borough also officially voted to dedicate the Haines School playground as “Jenae’s Playground.”
The vote was a formality based on regulations in borough code around when the assembly can officially dedicate places and buildings. But the vote also served as a brief moment to recognize and remember the playground’s namesake, Jenae Larson, a graduate of and former teacher at the Haines School who was one of two victims in the 2020 Beach Road landslide.
Assembly member Cheryl Stickler was visibly emotional when speaking about Larson.
“She was such a light to our community, and by the time she was in kindergarten she was already such a light in our school,” Stickler said. “Whenever I drive by that playground I think of Jenae.”
Chilkoot working group adds member
The assembly voted to add one representative of the general public to a group advising the borough manager on Chilkoot Corridor policy.
The group, which met for the first time this week, was created by the assembly to study management of the Chilkoot Lake area, and specifically bear-human interactions that have long been a concern.
Manager Alekka Fullerton, charged by the assembly with putting the group together, has said she sees it as a group meant to give her technical advice — different from a borough committee. Her reasoning for that includes the fact that not all of the group members are borough residents. By code, borough committees members must satisfy a borough residency requirement.
Prior to Tuesday’s meeting, the group was made up of tourism director Reba Hylton, commercial tour operators Greg Schlacter and Sean Gaffney, and representatives from the Chilkoot Indian Association, Alaska Division of Parks, and the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.
Fullerton compared the group to recent working groups, including one that studied solid waste.
As a technical advisory group, which is not governed by the state’s open meetings law, the meetings and details of the sessions will not be required to be made public, though the first meeting was held publicly.
Fullerton also argued that the technical nature of the group was the reason she did not include a representative of public users of the recreational area, given that the group’s recommendations would pass to public bodies like the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee for review.
Some pushed back on that notion, specifically pointing to the presence of tour operators on the committee.
“It’s either an agency group or it’s not,” mayor Tom Morphet said. “If it’s representing users then the public should be on it.”
A final vote on adding a member of the public was unanimous. The borough manager will now choose “an experienced non-commercial user” of the Chilkoot recreation area to participate in the group.
Nonprofit requests
Nonprofit funding has been a controversial topic, with questions of both if and how to distribute public funds. In recent years, the assembly has at times used a standardized request form by which the assembly can evaluate requests against one another.
But this year, the assembly did not budget any money to give to nonprofits, and it has given no indication about if it plans to distribute nonprofit money in next year’s budget, or how it would do so.
In the absence of an official system, the Chamber of Commerce, and now the Chilkat Valley Preschool, have come to the assembly on their own to ask for funding. As of yet, the assembly has not been able to provide a timeline or process for how the organization’s requests will be considered.
On Tuesday, the preschool made its case, asking for $10,000 to pay for basic operating costs this school year. Tammy Lund, speaking for the organization, said that the preschool’s board was considering cutting operations down to three days per week, but if it stayed at the full five, the preschool would be out of money by mid-March.
In the end, the assembly voted to add discussion of early childhood education funding to the agenda for their planning discussion next month.
But at the moment, the assembly appears hesitant to approve Chilkat Valley Preschool’s request without first going through some sort of broader process, even despite the organization’s dwindling runway.
Among assembly members, there did seem to be broad agreement that the borough would likely need to dedicate funding toward early childhood education in the near future.
But in the past, mayor Tom Morphet has said, as a matter of fairness, he would hope to pay any borough subsidies to all childcare and education providers.
Assembly member Eben Sargent reiterated that point Tuesday.
“There’s no way to spend public money that doesn’t involve a fair process,” Sargent said. “I’d have a hard time giving any organization money without a fair call to all people working in the area.”
Sales Tax
The assembly has voted to introduce changes to borough sales tax exemptions. The exemption language has been discussed in recent commerce committee meetings, and the most recent change is to a sales tax exemption on construction materials.
Currently, buyers in the borough only pay tax on the first $5,000 of a construction materials purchase.
Sargent, who chairs the commerce committee, said the $5,000 limit was put into place in 1979, and if adjusted for inflation, the limit would have risen to $22,000 this year.
He did acknowledge that going from $5,000 to $22,000 could be a drastic change — one that could potentially inhibit new construction, and especially new housing construction.
To address that, while still generating more revenue for the borough, the new legislation proposes raising the limit to $12,000 beginning April 1, 2026. That would mean customers would pay tax on up to $12,000 of construction materials per purchase. The limit would then rise again to $22,000 in April 2028.
The changes currently are scheduled for public hearings at the next two assembly meetings, on Jan. 13 and 27.
On the horizon
Next month should give a sense of the borough’s broad outlook for the upcoming year, as well as the state of the budget going into the start of the 2027 fiscal year budgeting process.
A Jan. 24 assembly goal-setting meeting will include discussion of some of the borough’s budget priorities, as well as requests to the state and federal governments for funding.
Assembly members also plan to evaluate lobbyist contracts, including whether or not to rehire a state lobbyist in Juneau.